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Gordon Hawley (1900 - 1957)
Gordon "Tex" Hawley was born in Chatham, Ontario on June 6, 1900 to parents Gilbert Hawley and Edna Bond. He moved to British Columbia in approximately 1934, and worked as a seaman until 1942. He was admitted to the B.C. Penitentiary as prisoner #8869 on November 26, 1956, but had served a previous term in the penitentiary as prisoner #5294 in the late 1930s or early 1940s.Mr. Hawley's 1956 incarceration in the B.C. Pen was for the theft of $15.00 worth of men's socks. He was likely sentenced under the "Habitual Criminal" provisions of the Criminal Code of the day, under which anyone convicted of any crime on three previous occasions who could be shown to be leading a "persistently a criminal life" could be incarcerated indefinitely. (This very controversial provision was repealed in 1977.)
Six weeks after his admission to the B.C. Penitentiary, on January 7, 1957, Mr. Hawley died after hanging himself with a torn bedsheet tied to the bars of his cell. He was fifty-six years old. A Coroner's inquest was held by New Westminster Coroner Edwin Howard McEwen on January 8th, and Mr. Hawley was buried in the B.C. Penitentiary cemetery on January 14, 1957. He was survived by two brothers and four sisters.
References
- B.C. Penitentiary card index (in the possession of Tony Martin, Retired Prison Officers' Association).
- British Columbia Division of Vital Statistics, call number: 57-09-001201 (see BC Archives online Vital Event Indexes)
- Obituary in Transition, January/February 1957, a magazine published monthly by "the men of the BC Penitentiary, New Westminster, BC" between 1952 - 1963. A set of Transition is housed in the Special Collections Department of the Vancouver Public Library.
- Personal correspondence with Gordon Hawley's niece.
- B.C. Civil Liberties Association 1964 position paper Habitual Criminals
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